A Conversation with Chip Lee

The Outdoor and Experiential Education Office asked Colorado Academy Upper School English teacher (and long time outdoorsman) Chip Lee about his outdoor memories, challenges, and favorites:

 

Q: What is your earliest memory of being in nature?

Mr. Lee: Surfing when I was a kid. Surfing a LOT. In the cold and the chop of Massachusetts’s storm surf and thinking how out there it could be. Then, getting sent to canoe school totally out there on the Allagash River with no base camp or seeing a house in Northern Maine at age 11 for 8 weeks… then getting sent to basically the Arctic Circle (Mistassini River that goes into Hudson Bay) for another extended 8-9 week canoe trip when I was 12. I remember thinking, “Is my father really trying to kill me?”

 

Q: What have been your most challenging outdoor experiences?

Mr. Lee: Running 15 Hardrock 100-mile trail races and being on the trail for 36 hours straight. Climbing Astroman in Yosemite and having my partner get hurt on the last pitch.

 

After giving her a two-day head start, trying to beat my wife to the Mississippi River on my bike. I ran from Dillon to Boulder, doing all the peaks on the Continental Divide between the two towns.

 

Q: What is your favorite piece of outdoor gear?

Mr. Lee: My $9 sweatpants from Gart Bros. They are better than anything Prana makes.

 

Q: What piece of outdoor gear is at the top of your “dream” list?

Mr. Lee: A new pair of sweatpants because they’re almost worn out.

 

Q: What industry development has had the greatest impact on your time spent in the outdoors?

Mr. Lee: Cams, probably. They totally changed the game and made it so you could do, say, the Salathe Wall on El Cap in about half the time, and you could free a lot more pitches.

 

Q: Which outdoor experience took you the farthest from home?

Mr. Lee: The student trip to the Coast to Coast walk across England - 214 miles. Then “Tour of the Lake District” after that two weeks of nothing but awesome walking, as in awe-inspiring.

 

Q: What is your favorite Colorado “out the back door” natural experience?

Mr. Lee: Most days, leaving my house and walking onto the open space trails in under four minutes. I live pretty much right on the edge of 100+ miles of trail.

 

Q: At what point in your life did you feel most out of your element in the outdoors?

Mr. Lee: Having to use my compass in the gully on the south side of Kit Carson [Peak] in fog/rain when I could only see 10 feet and I had 2000 feet of downclimbing to do off the north side. I swore I was going north, but my compass said south. This happens all the time in England in fog and sideways rain--that disorientation. But I used to fly planes, and your body tells you you’re sideways but the instruments tell you you’re level. Always, always bring a compass and be really good with it.

 

Q: Describe your most impressive “epic fail.”

Mr. Lee: There are a few: 70 feet to the ground at Cathedral in New Hampshire, running my hand down my friend’s back as I went by him, not roped. Successfully crash-landing an airplane and not hitting horses and cows and a barn. Two successive 30 footers onto my head and then finishing the route on Grotto Cliffs in Aspen.

 

Q: What is at the top of your outdoor “bucket list”?

Mr. Lee: Basically anything outdoors and a lot of exercise in the mountains.

 

Q: What is your most meaningful outdoor experience?

Mr. Lee: Running/walking from my home in Boulder to Colorado Academy to meditate on, commemorate, and to say thanks to a former student, Zach Hills. Zach, CA Class of 2001, died in a motorcycle accident a few days before his high school graduation. I left my home at 12:30 a.m. and arrived at school at 7:30 a.m. for what would have been Zach’s graduation ceremony. That was seven hours on the nose for 36 miles. It was a long, strange trip, all for Zach, who always said, “So, when are you going to do that run?”

 

Q: What is one outdoor experience you wish everyone could have?

Mr. Lee: Being alone in the middle of nowhere and having no safety net.